The Pest Pressure Question for 2024: Whether the Weather Will Have an Impact
March 13, 2024 Year in and year out, the one factor that virtually everyone in the agricultural industry mentions will have a major impact on the upcoming growing season is weather. As many insiders have pointed out: “It’s the one thing growers can’t control.”
On this front, the 2024 growing season presents a classic “good news, bad news” scenario. On the good news side, the winter of 2023-24 was milder than normal, with cold temperatures and snowfall less than usual for much of the country. This means that ag retailers and their grower-customers will be able to begin the planting season earlier than in past years.
But on the bad news side, higher temperatures and less snowfall could lead to increased pest pressures in crop fields in 2024. This would be a much different scenario than played out during 2023.
“A lot of the U.S. was hot and dry, so much of the country didn’t see that much disease pressure in 2023,” said Kim Tutor, Technical Marketing Manager for Corn and Wheat Fungicides at BASF.
For 2024, however, the weather situation was much different, said David Reif, Northern Sales Agronomist for Vive Crop Protection. “It’s been a very light winter with above average temperatures,” said Reif at the 2024 Commodity Classic show. “That tends to lead to higher insect pressure.”
Other attendees at the event agreed with this view, pointing out that only diseases and insects, but weed pressures could also be greater during the 2024 growing season. In fact, warmer temperatures across much of the U.S. in recent years has led to certain once regional field pests expanding into entirely new areas of the country. This includes tar spot now appearing as far south as Central Florida and soybean tentiform leafminers being found as far north as the Dakotas and Minnesota. In addition, new species of weeds are starting to show resistance to long-standing herbicide applications, such as common ragweed in the Midwest.
Loading ...According to Shawna Hubbard, Strategic Marketing Manager for Corteva Agriscience, this means ag retailers and growers will have to be extra diligent to combat field pests in 2024 than in other recent years. “They will have to scout early and often to identify what pests and weeds are present in their fields and then consider all available options to maintain control,” said Hubbard.
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